other the rustic loves
which they might survey among their children.

"Will not Monsieur draw nearer to the dancers?" said the Cure; "there is
a plank thrown over the rivulet a little lower down."

"No!" said I, "perhaps they are seen to better advantage where we are:
what mirth will bear too close an inspection?"

"True, Sir," remarked the priest, and he sighed.

"Yet," I resumed musingly, and I spoke rather to myself than to my
companion, "yet, how happy do they seem! what a revival of our Arcadian
dreams are the flute and the dance, the glossy trees all glowing in the
autumn sunset, the green sod, and the murmuring rill, and the buoyant
laugh, startling the satyr in his leafy haunts; and the rural loves
which will grow sweeter still when the sun has set, and the twilight has
made the sigh more tender and the blush of a mellower hue! Ah, why is it
only the revival of a dream? why must it be only an interval of labour
and woe, the brief saturnalia of slaves, the green resting-spot in a
dreary and long road of travail and toil?"

"You are the first stranger I have met," said the Cure, "who seems to
pierce beneath the thin veil of our Gallic gayety; the first to whom the
scene we now survey is fraught with other feelings than a belief in the
happiness of our peasantry, and an envy at its imagined exuberance. But
as it is not the happiest individuals, so I fear it is not the happiest
nations, that are the gayest."

I looked at the Cure with some surprise. "Your remark is deeper than the
ordinary wisdom of your tribe, my Father," said I.

"I have travelled over three parts of the globe," answered the Cure:
"I was not always intended for what I am;" and the priest's mild eyes
flashed with a sudden light that as suddenly died away. "Yes, I have
travelled over the greater part of the known world," he repeated, in a
more quiet tone; "and I have noted that where a man has many comforts to
guard, and many rights to defend, he necessarily shares the thought and
the seriousness of those who feel the value of a treasure which they
possess, and whose most earnest meditations are intent upon providing
against its loss. I have noted, too, that the joy produced by a
momentary suspense of labour is naturally great in proportion to the
toil; hence it is that no European mirth is so wild as that of the
Indian slave, when a brief holiday releases him from his task. Alas!
that very mirth is the strongest evidence of the weight of th